Storm-struck marinas are swamped by rules

Marina owners

Jan. 8, 2013

1/7/12 Little Egg Harbor, NJ Marina owners in the Little Egg Harbor-Tuckerton area hold a press conference about how the new FEMA flood maps and impending local ordinances could require them to rebuild shops and buildings as high as 14 feet above ground level and make it impossible to conduct boat work on their properties at Munro's Marina Monday January 7. They've asked for FEMA to reconsider its ruling for V (velocity) flood standards for marinas, which need to mantain some work spaces at ground level to handle boats. Staff photo Tanya Breen

1/7/12 Little Egg Harbor, NJ Mark Hattman, owner of Sheltered Cove Marina in Tuckerton, speaks as marina owners in the Little Egg Harbor-Tuckerton area hold a press conference about how the new FEMA flood maps and impending local ordinances could require them to rebuild shops and buildings as high as 14 feet above ground level and make it impossible to conduct boat work on their properties at Munro's Marina Monday January 7. They've asked for FEMA to reconsider its ruling for V (velocity) flood standards for marinas, which need to mantain some work spaces at ground level to handle boats. Staff photo Tanya Breen

LITTLE EGG HARBOR — In 45 years of operation, the Munro family never saw anything like the 30 inches of water in their marina’s engine shop. But now they’re worried it’s the rules for rebuilding from superstorm Sandy that will put them out of business.

“You can’t operate a marina 14 feet in the air,” said Vicki Munro, who runs Munro’s Marina in Mystic Island with husband, Allen, and daughter Kristi. Alarmed by new federal flood zone maps and impending new local building ordinances, representatives from 15 area marinas and boats businesses met Monday with news crews to talk about their worries.

While Gov. Chris Christie is promising to ease state regulations, marina owners said they don’t know how to pay for rebuilding to the new flood zone elevations. A meeting Friday night with Federal Emergency Management Agency workers and some 900 residents — many still out of their homes — wasn’t much help, Kristi Munro said.

“I could not get an answer. I got, ‘We don’t know, we’ll try, I’ll get back to you,” she said. “It’s now 70 days after the hurricane, and we don’t have a single answer.”

Marina operators are being told they don’t qualify for federal aid because FEMA can’t offer direct grants to business — at best, Small Business Administration loans at rates that are often not competitive with banks.

Even SBA loans are of limited help, Munro added. “They say that our docks and bulkheads are not considered equipment,” she said, standing in the windswept boatyard with a crowd clad in jeans and work boats.

“We need them. This is a watermen’s community — fishing, boating, crabbing, duck hunting,” said James Donofrio of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, one of the groups pushing in Congress for a $150 million fisheries disaster package that could benefit marinas and tackle shops hit by the storm.

That aid was blocked last week, when conservatives objected to inclusions for fishermen in Missippi and Alaska and their local fishery failures.

“I was at the New York Boat Show all last week. I heard hundreds of people saying, ‘We’re not coming back to the Jersey Shore this year because we don’t know what’s in the water,’ ” said Mark Hattman, president of Sheltered Cove Marina in Tuckerton.

Elected officials in Barnegat Bay towns are asking the state or Army Corps of Engineers to take the lead on clearing debris and sandbars from the bay’s channels.